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98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

jdan.github.io

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Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#51

Post by azlyrics »

prezjordan wrote: post #25

Hey HN - author here. This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020. Very much a labor of love and a surprising way to realize I still liked programming. I wrote some scattered thoughts here [0] I also "run" this project quite differently than I usually do - when I receive a pull request instead of merging it I do a quick glance through the user's github to make sure they're not a spammer before giving them _…

very fun stuff...just wanted to share this i found

the win 98 there is using css and js. experiments thats aimed at fun is always welcome

https://twitter.com/PCBANGio/status/1493850712471527426

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#52

Post by tmtvl »

ranger_danger wrote: post #12
laserdancepony wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no dark mode fad in 1998. Different color schemes for visually impaired people existed, but they were most often not very aesthetic.

it's not a fad.

Yeah, I do seem te recall dark mode being better for people with... I think it was cataract? Though with that notable exception dark mode is of course entirely superfluous.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#53

Post by masswerk »

prezjordan wrote: post #25

Hey HN - author here. This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020. Very much a labor of love and a surprising way to realize I still liked programming. I wrote some scattered thoughts here [0] I also "run" this project quite differently than I usually do - when I receive a pull request instead of merging it I do a quick glance through the user's github to make sure they're not a spammer before giving them _…

> This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020.

OS UI projects are actually good for this. Back in the day, when Classic Mac OS was customizable thanks to its Theme Manager, I went through a few Kaleidoscope schemes for the same reason. Very therapeutical.

Well done!

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#54

Post by masswerk »

whatwhatwhat_ wrote: post #13

why would anyone want to resurrect that terrible operating system? that’s the bar with which crappy software is measured against

I was never a Windows guy, even less then, but you just have to love this demo page.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#55

Post by jeroenhd »

claudiawerner wrote: post #46
grenoire wrote: post #3

Honestly full-assed implementation. Font hinting is a bit odd with a green sheen on Firefox Win 10...

I noticed that too! I wonder what's happening there. I searched the CSS and there's nothing like green in there... Anyone have clues as to what's causing the text within textboxes and such to be green?

My guess is subpixel rendering. The single pixel lines ending up halfway across a pixel, activating more green than it intended to do.

This fix (https://stackoverflow.com/a/22925525) removes the green shine despite being prefixed with -webkit. It's not longer a pixel-perfect match with Windows 98, though, so CRT users may notice the difference!

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#56

Post by josephg »

zozbot234 wrote: post #44
clnq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UIs around the year 2001 were fantastically accessible. The recent obsession with flatness undid a lot of good practices.

I like the SerenityOS design choices. Looks pretty much like a 2001-or-so UI, but adopting more modern design elements (such as, e.g. breadcrumb navigation widgets) where they actually make sense.

I adore the design language of Haiku / BeOS for the same reason.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#57

Post by masswerk »

Raicuparta wrote: post #45
int_19h wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some minor discrepancies. Window titlebars weren't gradient in Win98 - that came in Win2k and WinME. The combobox dropdown has rounded ages (Win11 + Edge) and there's a gap between it and the textbox. The tree view has different widths for "+" and "-" on the nodes, and neither is properly aligned with the dotted lines of the tree. The biggest giveaway, though, is that you can drag to highlight text pretty m…

Styling drop-down contents in most modern browsers os either very limited or impossible. That's why so many UI frameworks reimplement them from scratch, usually with the help of JavaScript

Well, it has just become available recently. But, since this is a project from 2020, this hadn't been an option then.

[1] https://web.dev/state-of-css-2022/#customizing-select-elemen...

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#59

Post by jeroenhd »

tshaddox wrote: post #23

Did Windows 98 really have such laughably low contrast between text and that dark grey background?

To give it some credit, CRTs handle such contrast quite differently to modern screen technologies. The CRT itself added a tiny bit of colour bleed and blurring and the fact the colour is radiated out (rather than filtered out, like on LCD based technologies) gave it more contrast than you'd think looking at these colours now.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#60

Post by jeroenhd »

slim wrote: post #47

a lot of justified praise for win95/98 ui every time it comes up. but I would like to hear criticism if possible. anyone?

Plenty of criticism to be found about Win95/98.

The control panel and menus upon menus upon menus were not very user friendly. The design was built around low-res CRT screens, which very negatively affects modern screens. Hitboxes were often small, especially for the mice at the time. Commonly used UI elements such as the start menu lacked tons of features we take for granted now (searching in the start menu, for example). Icons were low-res and not always clear, though they were made excellently with more care than any other facet of any modern piece of software I can think of. Navigation controls were severely limited, simple things like breadcrumb navigation simply wasn't invented yet.

Windows XP fixed a lot of small issues found in the Win9x/Win2k UI styling. It had its own problems, but going back to the 9x days is not always an improvement.

It says a lot that I find the 9x style so much easier to use than the "modern" flat designs. It's like we're back in the middle of DOS text characters all over again, having UI elements execute actions after you've guessed about what they might do.

As for a modern take on old ideals, the SerenityOS design is an amazing combination of Win9x/Win2k ideas and modern controls. ReactOS is also used to have a new take on the old style, but that has been modernized to Win10-like menu bars in recent releases.

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